4/8/11 1:25 PM EDT

Former Governor and DNC Chairman Howard Dean, as I noted earlier, has emerged abruptly as America's most vocal supporter of the embattled Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK), a controversial Iranian opposition group based in part in Iraq.

Dean participated in a press conference today at the National Press Club denouncing the Iraqi Government's violent effort to push more than 3,000 MEK members from one refugee camp to another, something that happened after the camp lost its U.S. military protection and that's seen as a favor by the Iraqis to Iran's government.

Dean told me in a telephone interview this afternoon that the U.S. troops should return to the camp.

"We’re not looking to have an armed conflict with the Iraqis – if we send the American troops in, [the Iraqis] will leave," he said, calling on the U.S. to evacuate the wounded, turn the water back in the camp, and provide hospital care to the survivors of the raid, and pointing to a video that appears to show Iraqi Humvees attacking civilians.

Though the MEK is on the State Department's list of terror groups, supporters say they've laid down their arms, and European institutions have removed the terrorist label. Dean noted that the MEK have helped the U.S. in Iraq.

"We owe them and we promised we would protect them," he said.

Dean said he'd only learned of the issue earlier this year "completely by chance," after his speaking agent contacted him with a request to give a paid speech at an MEK's conference. He said he'd researched the group before agreeing to speak, and sympathized with their cause.

"How I got hooked is I’m for the underdog," he said. "These guys are getting a bad rap and they are getting killed for it."

Dean said he'd been working closely with the group in recent days, even looking over and "cleaning up" the full-page ad they took out recently in POLITICO. He said that while he's given paid speeches for the group, his advocacy is pro bono. He said he had been reassured to see former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, former National Security Adviser Jim Jones, and former Governor Bill Richardson at an MEK panel in Washington in late January and retired Generals Peter Pace and Hugh Shelton at the MEK conference in Paris where Dean spoke the next month.

"I said to myself, 'These are obviously not terrorists. The former chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff will obviously not be consorting with terrorist," he said.

After his speech, "They sent me a video of Camp Ashraf with the people thianking me in English – it’s an incredible place," he said.

He also dismissed the common view that the MEK is a cult that isolates members from their families.

"It's just not true," he said, saying he'd had the charge that children were separated from their families satisfactorily explained: "They said, 'Well what happened was we were attacked and we evacuated all the small children to and sent them to live with other people."

4/8/11 10:31 AM EDT

Former Governor, Iraq war foe, and DNC Chairman Howard Dean has emerged, a bit improbably, as a leading international spokesman for the MEK, an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq and viewed by some as a cult, which is currently on the State Department's list of outlawed terror groups.

"Ashraf is part of a government-in-exile which is headed by Madame Maryam Rajavi. We should recognise the government-in-exile headed by Madame Rajavi," said Howard Dean, the former Democratic presidential candidate. "It is an outrage that the MEK remains on the terrorist list in the US. There is no legitimacy in this."

He also, I notice, gave a rousing speech on the topic last month, telling a cheering crowd, "We put Maliki in and he ought to respect the human rights in the American constitution":

8/19/10 4:34 PM EDT

Democracy for America, the group that sprung from Howard Dean's 2004 campaign for president, has taken a sharply different line from Dean's call for "compromise" on a mosque and cultural center two blocks from ground zero that he labeled an "affront."

The group e-mailed members today with a pledge to support religious freedom and a lament from its executive director that seems aimed directly at Dean:

Well-intentioned leaders of the Democratic Party are getting caught up in the fray as well, some of them seeking to find common ground with an implacable opposition. It's not helping.

The executive director, Arshad Hasan, also writes:

Now, let's be clear, the subject of the highest profile Muslim structure, 51 Park in New York City, will have a basketball court and a culinary school. Two floors will have a prayer room. The other eleven will host movie nights, performances, group dinners, etc. — it's basically a Muslim YMCA, open to everyone. These moderate Muslims are doing everything we could ask of them. They're trying to build a bridge in the communities they live in, trying to show the world that Muslims are cool and interesting and diverse and proving that being a Muslim does not equal being a terrorist.

But they're being thrown under the bus by our elected leaders, egged on by some of the ugliest elements of the right wing.

Full e-mail after the jump.

UPDATE: Dean defends his stance to Glenn Greenwald, arguing that the central question is feelings, not arguments.

DFA Member —

Over the last week we've heard a lot from DFA members around the country asking for action to protect the rights of religious freedom for all Americans, and I couldn't agree more.

I don't get upset much. I mean, I get ticked off at Republicans and Democrats (and at really bad customer service!), but that's why I work with you at DFA. Because when we get upset, we don't stew in it and hope it goes away. We do something about it.

The controversy around the building of a Muslim Community Center at 51 Park in New York City should upset all of us. It definitely upsets me. Shortly after the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks, much of this country came together. But there were a number of other, smaller tragedies occurring all over the country as a result of the attacks. People who "looked like terrorists" were victims of harassment, intimidation and outright violence.

That includes me and every member of my immediate family in different instances. My response was to protest the coming wars. My family did something different, though. They started going to Mosque. It did more than renew their faith — it provided a sense of community and safety during a very dark time for us. But for the last nine years, at least, people have been trying to block the construction of mosques all over the country.

Now, let's be clear, the subject of the highest profile Muslim structure, 51 Park in New York City, will have a basketball court and a culinary school. Two floors will have a prayer room. The other eleven will host movie nights, performances, group dinners, etc. — it's basically a Muslim YMCA, open to everyone. These moderate Muslims are doing everything we could ask of them. They're trying to build a bridge in the communities they live in, trying to show the world that Muslims are cool and interesting and diverse and proving that being a Muslim does not equal being a terrorist.

But they're being thrown under the bus by our elected leaders, egged on by some of the ugliest elements of the right wing. Well-intentioned leaders of the Democratic Party are getting caught up in the fray as well, some of them seeking to find common ground with an implacable opposition. It's not helping.

This isn't just a Manhattan problem. Right now, there is opposition to mosques in Staten Island, Brooklyn, Southern California, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Illinois and dozens of other locations across our nation. Where would they move? If public pressure can be brought to bear to take down the most high-profile Muslim community center in liberal NYC, then these other places don't even have a chance, ground zero connection or not.

Frankly, this isn't about ground zero. This is about America. This is about freedom. This is about people and there seems to be no place that Muslim people can go without being harassed.

The harassment has to stop, and that starts with you and me.

I think most people agree that Muslims have the right to worship. But these efforts to harass Muslims are based in fear, prejudice, and ignorance. Removing a community center doesn't solve these problems. But talking about religious freedom — really engaging people — can open people's minds and blunt the prejudice.

I pledge to do it myself.

I pledge today to stand up for religious freedom right now. We cannot wait another day to defend the rights of all Americans to worship if they want, where they want and when they want. I will not wait for the conversation to come to me; I will start the conversation now. Please join me in making the pledge to fight for our universal American values of acceptance and respect for religious freedom.

I need you, in your community, to have those challenging conversations with people you know.

Take the pledge right now.

It's time to be proactive in support of the values that define what we stand for and who we are as Americans. After you take the pledge, please follow up and share the conversations you've had. I think we'll all find them inspiring to share.

8/18/10 4:59 PM EDT

Calling for compromise, Dean said on WABC radio today the mosque plan "a real affront to people who lost their lives" and laments Islam's being "in the 12th century" in Iran and some other Muslim countries.

He also says he believes the Cordoba organizers are in good faith, and that their project should be built elsewhere.

4/30/10 12:27 PM EDT

You may have heard a ridiculous — and completely false — rumor that I'm backing Charlie Crist.

No way, no how.

I am supporting just one candidate in the Florida Senate race: Kendrick Meek.

The announcement yesterday that Crist is abandoning the Republican Party to run as an independent is a game changer. Crist and Marco Rubio will now fight over the same pool of Republican voters, giving us a real path to victory.

Dean goes on to ask for money for Meek, in the midst of a push to convince Democrats and Floridians that he's the viable candidate — and that Crist isn't.

Dean's e-mail raises another point: In an alternate universe, Crist could have come out as an independent early with a clear rationale and positioned himself in some kind of coherent center. He might have gotten an endorsement or two (though not Howard Dean's). Instead, his indecision left him on his own.

The power of a sitting governor may help him raise some cash and keep him on the stage, but as Jim Gibbons is finding in Nevada, it's not worth all that much.

Full Dean e-mail after the jump.

From: Howard Dean
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 11:52 AM

Subject: Supporting Crist

Florida Democrats Florida Democrats

Dear Javier,

Put Kendrick over the top — donate before May 2!

You may have heard a ridiculous — and completely false - rumor that I'm backing Charlie Crist.

No way, no how.

I am supporting just one candidate in the Florida Senate race: Kendrick Meek.

The announcement yesterday that Crist is abandoning the Republican Party to run as an independent is a game-changer. Crist and Marco Rubio will now fight over the same pool of Republican voters, giving us a real path to victory.

Kendrick needs our help so he can seize this opportunity right now. While we know the corporate cash will continue to flow to both Rubio and Crist, the resources Kendrick needs to get his message out can only come from the grassroots.

We have to help put Kendrick over the top.

Click here to rush $5 or more to Kendrick before the midnight Sunday deadline. Charlie Crist's game-changing announcement is a tremendous opportunity. Let's seize it.

I'm supporting Kendrick Meek because, while the Republicans have been melting down, he's been a hands-on leader for the people of Florida. He knows what needs to be done.

That's why he's working tirelessly to create good-paying jobs and turn Florida's economy around. He's fighting for to hold Wall Street accountable, so the economy is never again brought to its knees by stock market gamblers.

I know Kendrick will keep on fighting for Florida's working families because that's what he's been doing his whole life. He's not some ideological extremist and he's not governed by raw political ambition.

Kendrick tells me the best way we can help his campaign right now is to help him meet this fundraising goal before midnight Sunday. There are just six months left to win this race.

Click here to rush $5 or more to Kendrick before the midnight Sunday deadline. Charlie Crist's game-changing announcement is a tremendous opportunity. Let's seize it.

I've always said that the power to win elections and lead this country in the right direction rests in your hands. That's still true today.

Kendrick can't win this race by himself. It will take all of us doing our part over the next six months.

Maybe one reason former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and so much of the digital Left can so casually dismiss the Senate health care reform bill is that they operate in an environment where so few people need to worry about access to insurance.

The 2004 presidential campaign that propelled Dean to national prominence was fueled predominantly by "wine track" Democratic activists-generally college-educated white liberals. (In the virtually all-white 2004 Iowa caucus, for instance, exit polls showed that two-thirds of Dean's votes came from voters with a college degree.) Those are the same folks, all evidence suggests, who provide the core support for online activist groups like MoveOn.org or Dean's Democracy for America and congregate most enthusiastically on liberal websites. (According to studies by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, college graduates are more than twice as likely as those with only a high-school degree to communicate about politics online.) Along with Dean, those digital Democratic activists are generating the loudest demands to derail the Senate bill.

Some individuals in these overlapping political networks undoubtedly face challenges with access to health care, but as a group college-educated whites are much less likely than any other segment of the population to lack health insurance.

12/16/09 7:52 PM EDT

Robert Gibbs' sharp dismissal of Howard Dean angered allies, and so John Podesta tries a more respectful tone in rebutting the former governor in a post topped with a photograph of Podesta and Dean grinning together.

He writes:

Since Joe Lieberman demanded stripping the public option and Medicare buy-in provisions from the merged Senate bill, some strong progressives like Howard Dean have argued that without a public option or a Medicare buy-in provision, the bill is a giveaway to private insurers and should be killed. Other progressive leaders like Senators Jay Rockefeller, Tom Harkin and Sherrod Brown believe that the bill represents the best chance for passing health care reform in the foreseeable future. “I’m going to vote for it,” Brown told reporters. “I can’t imagine I wouldn’t. I mean there’s too much at stake.”

Change of the magnitude envisioned by health care reformers does not come easily. There have been many frustrations and there will be more. But, as a senior White House staffer with a ringside seat for the slow death of comprehensive care in 1994, I am keenly aware of the real alternative to the bills now before us: millions more Americans without health care and billions more for health care spending as the same challenges President Clinton tried to resolve continue to metastasize unchecked.

So while I have great respect for Governor Dean, and we have worked together to provide the strongest health care reform bill for the American people, I come down on the side of the Senate passing the bill.

Here’s why:

The Senate health care bill is not without its problems. But if enacted, it would represent the most significant public reform of our health care system that Congress has passed in the 40 plus years I have worked in politics. The bill will give health care coverage to a record 31 million Americans who are currently uninsured, lay a foundation that will begin to lower costs for millions of families, and provide all Americans with the access to adequate and dependable coverage when they need it most.

He goes on to list the plan's merits, leading with its central progressive goals: Vastly expanding coverage, and more heavily regulating the insurance industry.

12/16/09 12:46 PM EDT

Democracy for America, the successor to the Dean campaign, which is now run by his brother, is out today with an email attacking health care legislation on a vulnerable point: The individual mandate. That's the feature candidate Obama used against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, though it's received less heat that other features of the legislation.

The group's appeal:

Senate leaders are all over Washington claiming they finally have a healthcare reform bill they can pass, as long as they remove the public option. After all, they say that even without a public option, the bill still "covers" 30 million more Americans.

What they are actually talking about is something called the "individual mandate." That's a section of the law that requires every single American buy health insurance or break the law and face penalties and fines. So, the bill doesn't actually "cover" 30 million more Americans - instead it makes them criminals if they don't buy insurance from the same companies that got us into this mess.

This is a real vulnerability, and all the more so because of Obama's past stance. In a February, 2008 debate, he defended a mailing attacking Clinton on the subject in terms echoed by DfA:

The mailing that we put out accurately indicates that the main difference between Senator Clinton's plan and mine is the fact that she would force, in some fashion, individuals to purchase health care.

If it was not affordable, she would still presumably force them to have it, unless there is a hardship exemption, as they've done in Massachusetts, which leaves 20 percent of the uninsured out. And if that's the case, then, in fact, her claim that she covers everybody is not accurate.

Now, Senator Clinton has not indicated how she would enforce this mandate. She hasn't indicated what level of subsidy she would provide to assure that it was, in fact, affordable. And so it is entirely legitimate for us to point out these differences.

8/27/09 3:06 PM EDT

The news today that Vermont Governor Jim Douglas won't seek reelection next year prompted some prominent Dean backers and allies, I'm told, to begin discussing a return for the former DNC chair to his old job in the statehouse.

"Governor Dean is definitely not considering a run for Governor in Vermont," said the aide.

Dean also released a statement on the sitting governor, a Republican, promising to campaign for a Democratic successor:

In his more than three decades of public service, Jim Douglas has served the people of Vermont with integrity and he brought steady leadership to the Governorship.

The Democratic Party of Vermont has a number of outstanding candidates and it will no doubt be a spirited primary. I look forward to endorsing and campaigning on behalf of our Party's nominee in the 2010 elections.

6/9/09 3:52 PM EDT

After phone calls to both campaigns, Dean decided to let them both use his name. “I think that’s only the fair way to do it,” he told the 30 or so Skaller supporters packed into the small office of the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats. “Had I been a little more research-oriented and done my homework a little better, we wouldn’t have gotten in this situation, but we did, and I think that’s the fairest way out of it.”